glitterbug

The content of this podcast was recorded at the closing concert of this year’s ℅ pop festival in Cologne / Germany, which took place in the St. Michael’s church in the center of the city. It’s split into two parts (there was a short intermission between the two), the first 27 minutes consist of a composition for electronics and string ensemble named “Egress”, the second part is based on the quieter parts of my last album, “Cancerboy”.

I met the dear people of Smoke Machine from Taipeh / Taiwan last May in the Metrowaves Festival in Beijing, and it’s always amazing to find new friends with a similar outlook on art and music. So I’d like to thank Josh and the crew for the opportunity to share my music in places that I haven’t had the chance to visit yet (but hope to do that soon!).

About Egress:
“Egress is a work for string ensemble and electronics composed and recorded by Glitterbug, consisting of four chapters – Vacuity, Span, Stagger and Appraise.

Continuing his notable cinematic approach and pushing it to its next level, Glitterbug unveils Egress as audible storytelling, similar to radio-play and audio drama scores, dealing with notions of escape, isolation, loss, mourning, and undefined fear.

The composition’s thirty minutes are desolate and bare. They narrate an idea of a final, irreversible departure, presenting a soundtrack travelling through vacuous territories and hollow drifts. It narrates a void of inhabitable space, documenting the emotionality of the sound of a world post society, of a future in an unknown and possibly hostile place.

Egress is formed by a reduced musical structure, built upon discerning tonal subtleties, suspended single notes, and harmonics going slowly atonal.”

About Cancerboy:
Glitterbug’s albums, releases and remixes (on respected labels such as Mule, Nowtown, Ghostly, Ki Records and many more) have long placed him in a musical and artistic category of his own. He is a timeless, skillful and daring producer, immune to hypes and seasonal sub-genre fashions. He has developed his own particular musical language that spans seamlessly between deep techno and abstract intimate compositions, always poignant with score-like textures.

His 3rd studio album, Cancerboy, is another milestone conjoining powerful musical expression with heavy content. Cancerboy is an intimate autobiographical journey investigating one of the major experiences that shaped his life, his childhood struggle with cancer. Cancerboy is a personal, private chronicle of battles won and struggles lost, a sound-log suspended in an in-between world.

Cancerboy is an album on the edge of consciousness. Faraway reverbs and analog roughness gain presence, and forward strides an unreserved sound; candid, direct and near. It’s music that allows itself to be angry and desperate, to battle and depart, to challenge and gall. Yet within all its darkness are driving, hopeful moments that shine bright – celebrating a deep love of life.

A recording from the last Pacotek party in Tel Aviv, 10th of December 2010. I miss my friends and I miss Pacotek!

Glitterbug @ Pacotek Tel Aviv 10th December 2010 by Glitterbug

Wer are back to traveling, and I thought that I should start my good ol’ audio diary again. Here is the first chapter from Norway, from a small island close to Oslo, somewhere in the Fjords. More to come soon, since we are off to the mountains for some calamity in between shows, to a small cabin without electricity or running water… I can’ wait to record as much of nothingness as possible!

And this is how this place sounded like…

Since we arrived here in Israel on last Sunday, we have been driving around, seeing people, have been in meetings and drove back and forth between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and back.

One of my main occupations these days is to listen to my next album over and over again and to decide on the track order, which is actually quite a task considering that ‘Privilege’, my next album, will be a double CD with 2,5 hours of music and 20 new tracks… and of course it’s a very emotional place to be in, considering that a project, that took me more than a year to finish, is slowly coming to an end- I have a bit more than a week to finalize everything and to hand the materials over to the mastering studio. Phew. I am so horribly nervous.

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But well… yesterday, we went to the sea side in Tel Aviv, and the sound of the waves and the permanent background hum of the sea is something very pampering and calming to me. Especially with the waves moving the stones up and down, creating this very special clack-clack-clack of stones on stones.

And this is what this place sounded like…

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The murmur of people can have a similar effect on me. We went to see a dance performance in Jerusalem, and here is a bit of ambience from the slowly filling theater hall.

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This little bit was recorded in front of the theater hall, during the intermission.

One of my most favorite foods on the planet. Here is what the Restaurant Abu Shukri sounds like…

We came to Israel yesterday morning, for me it has been almost 9 months since my last visit. I think this has been the longest gap between two visits since my first stay here, somewhat 7 years ago.

It was also my dear old friend’s Anna’s birthday.

Anna is, besides many other things and being an amazing amazing DJ, one half of the Pacotek crew, and much could be written about our joint history of amazing squat raves and endless other parties here in Israel many many years ago. I really really missed her and I also really missed being here, and I am super excited for the upcoming two parties on the 17th and 18th of December. It feels just right to end the current performance tour here in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, together with Pacotek.

And here is a little snippet of what this evening sounded like.

It’s been awfully quiet around here. That was due to the fact that upon our return from Poland, on the 24th of November, at the end of our six weeks of continuous touring, i got pretty darn sick and after recovery (which took me more than a week), I had so much stuff to deal with, like finalizing my next album (more about that very very soon!), that I barely had the time to take care for my precious little blog. But here i am again. Sorry for the two week delay!!

Here is a little audio impression of our train ride from Torun to Gdansk, from where our flight back to Cologne left:

We rode in this super old, very very slow train that even had the old 6-seat compartments that one barely meets anymore around western Europe.

And here is a glimpse to the other side:

So. We are still 15km south of Mangalore, and we got through a tropical Cyclone (named Phyan) that confronted us with some of the most extreme weather at least I have ever experienced. We had some serious floods in the area, unbelievable thunderstorms that even hit the hotel that we are staying at, and endless walls of rain for something like 48 hours, including power outages, which, well, forced me to take some serious computer and music breaks… yet I managed to make three new tracks which i am really really happy about.

This is how the rain sounded like…

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We took a little trip to the city while the rain was still going strong… this is how the bus ride to the city sounded like.

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One of us had to do some bank transactions, and here is a little audible impression of the State Bank of India in Mangalore…

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But the tropical storm is passed us now, and the sun is back and with it the electricity (most of the time).

Here is an impression of what i can hear in the early morning when I wake up, and what i see from our balcony.

Today or tomorrow we will start rehearsing for the next upcoming show, at the Plateaux Festival in Poland. We are really excited about it, but the weather change will be challenging i guess…

We landed in Mangalore yesterday afternoon, which is on the shores of the Arabian Sea pretty far down south of India. We will stay here for a couple days, and I finally have some time to work on drafts of tracks that I started during this wonderful, yet sometimes emotionally challenging trip.

In case you want to know exactly where we are: here is a Google Maps Link…

My little, very rudimentary studio is located on the roof of our tiny hotel (which is 15km down south from Mangalore), and all i can see is palm trees and rain-forest vegetation around us, and i hear the sound of the waves and the notorious crows (that one finds everywhere in India), if I do not wear my head phones.

This is how the place sounds like.

We sadly only spent 2 days in Calcutta, and we saw so very little of this beautiful, strange, captivating, lively city. So here is a second impression, this time of a little street corner somewhere in the center around lunch time, with endless people eating at one of the endless little food stands, which i do not dare eating at anymore after i got horribly sick in Mumbai.

And this is how this corner sounded like.